In a little under two weeks, the United States will be obsessed with basketball. Games will crop up on computers, tablets, smartphones and television sets all across the country, and the results will scream in the headlines of websites and newspapers all around the world.

That’s right: It’s almost time for March Madness.

These are just a few steps to take in order to ensure that the games don’t result in reputation damage for you.

Skip the booze.

AUniversity of Minnesota studyfound that some 40 percent of people who went to professional baseball and football games drank alcohol while in the audience, and about 8 percent of those people got drunk. It’s likely that many more people drink while watching games at home.

While blending sport with booze can be fun, it could be hard on your reputation. If you’re drinking and driving, you could get arrested, and the reminder of that arrest could pop up on mugshot websites. Damage from these sites happens with breathtaking speed, and it can take a long time to clean up the mess. If you can avoid being arrested in the first place, it’s best to do so.

Hand over the phone.

Sports can be awfully hard on cell phones. Consider this: Inone poll, 12 percent of the whopping 23 million Americans who break their cell phones during sporting events admit that the problem happens during a fit of passion. A team makes an amazing goal, and they drop their phones to clap. Or, the team misses a goal, and viewers are disgusted enough to toss the phone down.

A broken phone is a tragedy, particularly for the people who can’t seem to function without a cell connection. But, phones can also do an amazing amount of reputation damage. A sip of beer taken during a game could make for a nice photo, but if it shows up on a social media site, viewers might think that sip was just one part of a drunken spree. Before you know it, you could be slapped with a nasty alcoholism rumor.

Or, if you’re a distracted user, your phone could be swiped by mischievous friends during the game. They could post nasty messages under your name in your social media accounts, leaving you with a huge mess to clean up.

If you’re distracted or upset, too, you could also say things on social media that you don’t really mean. If your comments are targeting members of specific ethnic or religious backgrounds, you could be in hot water in no time at all.

In general, it’s best to lock up your phone when you’re partying, drinking or both. These are the sorts of activities that make you lax, and that makes reputation mistakes much easier to make.

Don’t get crazy on company time.

March Madness gambling pools are common, andresearchers suggestthat some 50,000,000 Americans are expected to play them this year. You might get handed a piece of bracket paperwork to fill out, or you might have a website you can use to make your picks and win some dough.

If you participate, remember to play while you’re off the clock. Not only is it a good ethical idea, it could keep you out of reputation difficulty.

For example, astudysuggests that some 95 percent of people have dealt with a coworker problem in the past, and 94 percent of those people didn’t get the problem resolved because they drew false conclusions. That means there’s probably an entire pool of people around you with a bone to pick. If they see you tap-tapping away on something like a March Madness pool rather than working, they could attack you online and wreck your reputation, or they could take the issue up with your employer and cost you your job.

It’s vital to make sure that you’re handling your games when you’re not on the clock. That’s the only way to really stay safe.

We Can Help

If all of these tips come a little late for you and you’re already dealing with some madness of your own, we’d like to help. As a full-service reputation management company, we can help you to clean up past mistakes. And, we can surround you with protection, so you won’t be vulnerable to attacks in the future. Justcontact us, and we’ll pull together a plan just for you. We’re here to help.

If you’re on the hunt for a new job (and chances are, there are a lot of you, as there are 9 million unemployed people in the United States right now,per the BLS), you simply must use LinkedIn.

That’s becauseresearch suggeststhat some 94 percent of recruiters use LinkedIn to vet potential hires. If you’re asking for work, your potential employers are asking about you by looking at your profile on LinkedIn.

And, if your profile is public, your friends and neighbors might be checking out your LinkedIn profile, too. That means this one little site could be the best reputation management tool you have.

Here are 10 pesky mistakes that could keep you from LinkedIn success.

You’re not using your real name.

If you’ve been through some kind of reputation attack, chances are, your name is tacked to all sorts of terms that don’t accurately describe who you are and what you can do. Getting out in front of this damage means using your name as much as possible, especially in spots in which you can tie that name to something good. That means you simply must use your real name, not a pseudonym, in your LinkedIn profile.

You didn’t run spell check.

As you’re tap-tapping data into LinkedIn, the program is consistently searching for spelling errors. Each time you get a word wrong, you’ll get a little red squiggle of warning. Pay attention to those lines and amend your spelling, as needed, so you’ll look like the educated professional you really are.

You didn’t use a summary.

At the top of your profile, you’re given a little space to chat about your accomplishments and skills. You know what else you can put here? Great keywords. Think about the words you’d like people to use when they talk about you and your work, and incorporate those words into your summary. You’ll tie those good attributes to your name with this one easy step.

You didn’t include your home town or state.

Many reputation attacks are local in nature, stemming from something that happened close to where you live or where you work. By including a city name and state name, you’re tying your LinkedIn entry to your location, and you’re providing yet another take on your character in your home town. That’s a vital step, and it’s so easy to complete.

Your job history is incomplete.

An infographic fromMasters in Human Resourcessuggests that about 50 percent of people who use LinkedIn have incomplete profiles. Many of these people skip details about the jobs they’ve held or the work they’ve done.

Each job entry provides you with yet another opportunity to use excellent keywords. Each time you type, you’re giving a reader another opportunity to think about you in a different way, and each entry gives you yet another chance to drown out a reputation attack. Take each chance you’re given by filling out that profile completely.

Your photo isn’t professional.

Selfies, be gone! Your LinkedIn photo should show you in the clothing, and in the position, you plan to hold when you’re at work. That means you should be dressed nicely, smiling appropriately and centered in the camera lens. These few extra steps help you ensure that you look snappy and smart in your photos, and that could go miles toward protecting your reputation.

You have no testimonials.

Testimonials allow the people who have worked with you to speak up about how great you are. They’re a little like votes of confidence, and they can do wonders for your reputation. To get them, just reach out to a few colleagues and ask them to take the time to jot down some notes about you. When they’re done, you’ll have a suite of tools that can help you to demonstrate your value as a worker.

You’ve accepted invitations from everyone.

If you’re scanning your contact list and you can’t quite determine how you know the people you’re connected to, chances are, you’ve accepted invitations from strangers. It happens. Someone sends you a note, you hit “accept,” and before you know it, you’re tied to people you’ve never met before.

In general, your LinkedIn connections should include people you know. Good connections include:

Co-workers

Industry colleagues

Classmates

Potential employers

Teachers

Mentors

If you’re connected to random people, cull your list until you’re only dealing with people you know.

You’re connected to a few shady characters.

Imentioned this a few weeks ago, but it’s worth repeating: Your reputation is almost as important as your credit score. And some companies measure your online reputation by checking out the people you interact with online. If your contact list contains exceptional professionals, you’re also considered exceptional. And the reverse is true, too. So weed out the names of people with unclean histories.

10. You’ve embellished the truth here and there.

When it comes to LinkedIn, honesty truly is the best policy. It’s remarkably easy for people to check your facts, and you’ll want to ensure that the checks they do run smoothly. So be sure that each word you write is 100 true.

If you’d like a little help pulling together the perfect LinkedIn profile, give us a shout! Our writers can push, pull and mold your content until it says just what you need it to say. And we work quickly, too, so you’ll be online in no time.Contact usto find out more.

]]>http://www.internetreputation.com/10-mistakes-that-are-killing-your-linkedin-reputation/feed/0Top 10 Companies with the Best Reputationhttp://www.internetreputation.com/top-10-companies-with-the-best-reputation/
http://www.internetreputation.com/top-10-companies-with-the-best-reputation/#commentsThu, 19 Feb 2015 16:03:28 +0000http://www.internetreputation.com/?p=5447Your personal and brand’s reputation is everything. It’s the first thing people see when they search for your brand online, it’s the reason why some people love brands more than others and lastly, it’s also the biggest influencer on whether someone purchases from your store or moves onto the next.

So what can we learn from the best and biggest companies in the world today with the best reputations?

Before we jump into the specifics, let’s first look at the top ten rated companies based on their reputation from the latest Harris Poll Reputation Quotient findings.

Wegmans Food Markets

Amazon.com

Samsung

Costco

Johnson & Johnson

Kraft Foods

L.L. Bean

Publix Supermarkets

Apple

Google

Right away we can see that all of the names on the list are well known brands that many of us use and purchase from on a daily basis.

Wegmans walked away as the winner from this year’s poll, even though they only have a fraction of the revenue compared to Amazon.com, the super giant who came in second place.

The success of Wegmans is nothing surprising, as their locations are always packed with customers and simply blow away other “food shopping centers” in comparison.

“To be recognized in this way is just incredible,” said CEO Danny Wegman. “It always starts with our people, who thrill our customers every day and extend a family feeling in our stores across six states.”

As Danny Wegman said, “it all starts with our people”… and that’s why nearly all of the brands who made the top ten, are listed where they are.

While you might say “Amazon doesn’t have people” — they do have an incredible support team behind the scenes, as well as massive warehourses throughout the world who make everything at the company possible — but the “love” for their business starts and ends with customer. Amazon has perfected the art of making shopping on Amazon.com a joy, while also making the process to navigate through their site and find “related” products to buy easy.

All of this ties right back into the overall reputation for brands of all sizes. Business is no longer about sales figures and growth, it’s also about the relationship with their audience and brand power.

“Reputation is far from static and is a business asset that is earned every day as people evaluate companies through the lens of what matters most to them. Wegmans has spent years building a sterling reputation in the communities they serve, through its employees, one shopping experience at a time,” said Carol M. Gstalder, Reputation & Public Relations Practice Leader for Harris Poll.

To learn how to better manage and control what others are saying about your personal name, brand and business online, feel free to contact InternetReputation.com at (888) 711-5576 or click here to setup a free consultation.

]]>http://www.internetreputation.com/top-10-companies-with-the-best-reputation/feed/0How to Respond to Negative Comments and Reviewshttp://www.internetreputation.com/how-to-respond-to-negative-comments-and-reviews/
http://www.internetreputation.com/how-to-respond-to-negative-comments-and-reviews/#commentsTue, 17 Feb 2015 15:27:18 +0000http://www.internetreputation.com/?p=5445Reputation management is all about knowing where and when something is posted, mentioned or shares around your personal name, brand or business. In addition to knowing when and where something is said about your personal or business brand, you must also know HOW to respond to these negative comments and reviews.

Addressing negative comments and reviews is only half the battle and if you approach this mission in the wrong way, it can actually make things much worse for your brand and can spiral out of control quickly.

In this guide we are going to highlight some of the best methods on how brands and individuals should respond to complaints, negative reviews and comments online.

How to Respond to Negative Comments and Reviews

In most cases, it’s not a matter of “if” negative comments and reviews will affect your online reputation, but more of a question of “when”.

When that time comes, it’s important to be prepared and not let your emotions get the best of you. We’ve seen brands take only comments and reviews way too personal and make public statements that attack the end customer / reviewer and this only makes the situation worse and harder to control.

Instead you need to find where and why the comment was posted. How you can best address the situation, along with how you might be able to remove and update the complaint once addressed.

Review our recommendations below to best respond and control online complaints.

Acknowledge the issue — Negative reviews and complaints are going to be out there. It’s much better for you brand to respond to each of these complaints when possible, as your audience will appreciate that you actually care about fixing the issue.

Understand Why You are Getting Complaints — While complaints are a burden on all brands and businesses, they can also be useful as well. Instead of taking each complaint as nuisance, learn from these complaints and try to fix the problems within your organization so you don’t have repeat complaints online for the same issues.

Know how to address each situation — Some complaints are simple (our food was cold), while others may be more complicated (I had food poisoning after eating at this restaurants). Simple complaints can usually be addressed and solved publicly, however more severe complaints should be addressed online in a swift matter, then personally addressed with the customer / reviewer offline or through direct contact.

Take the time to review your response — One of the biggest problems we see with online complaints and responses from brands, is that they are simply too quick and unjust with their responses. Always remember that you are in a public audience with your responses and that you should relate with the customer / reviewer and that you are sorry they had a bad experience. It’s also important to proof read your response before clicking the submit button. Text can come off in different ways to different people… and what you think might sound sincere might sound arrogant to others.

Makes your responses authentic — Lots of brands and businesses love to use templates and automated responses to address their issues. This is fine for personal emails, but can easily be spotted in a public forum. Relate with each of your customers individually and don’t send them all the same canned responses.

Your Online Reputation Starts and Ends with You

As you can see, there is a lot more to managing and responding to online reviews and complaints than you might think.

At the same time it’s important to realize your online reputation starts and ends with you as well. The complaint happened as a result of something within your brand, and can be resolved and corrected in the same way.

Don’t take online reviews and complaints personal — instead look at them from a consumer’s point of view and how you would like to have the issue addressed if you were in the same position.

If you are worried about what’s being said about your personal name, brand or business online and would like help to better address these situations, feel free to contact InternetReputation.com at (888) 711-5576 or click here to setup a free consultation.

John Kitzhaber started his public service work in Oregon in 1978, when I was just strapping on my shoes for first grade. Since then, he’s held a variety of different public offices in Oregon, and I’ve seen him regularly. In fact, I nearly hit him with my bike during a particularly harried commute on a beautiful day in Waterfront Park. I was in a hurry, and he was campaigning. That could have ended badly.

But as it turns out, he was able to torpedo his career without my help. Back in October,a local newspaperdropped a bombshell of an article about the governor’s relationship with a girlfriend. She had a workspace in his office, and allegedly, it became easy enough to use her connections to advance her causes. That kind of influence peddling is verboten, and the report caused quite a scandal.

The scandal didn’t let up, either, and on Wednesday, Kitzhaber willresign, just one month into his historic fourth term. It’s a big blow for those of us who live and work in Oregon.

Now, national reports suggest that Kitzhaber could have recovered by issuing an apology and outlining just what had happened. I think that’s a pretty naïve viewpoint. We Oregonians have been hit with this story, over and over and over, and it’s kept us from focusing on a variety of other issues that we should be addressing (like, oh, the fact thatwe don’t have a workable healthcare exchange website, even though we’ve spent millions of taxpayer dollars on that project, but I digress).

Even if Kitzhaber had apologized, the story would have persisted. And many of us just wanted to move on to other things.

And I think Kitzhaber knew that, and it seems like he’s a little angry about that. Here’s just one little excerpt fromhis resignation statement:

“I must also say that it is deeply troubling to me to realize that we have come to a place in the history of this great state of ours where a person can be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced by the media with no due process and no independent verification of the allegations involved.”

I’d like to point out that this isn’t an issue that’s limited to Oregon. (Hello,Bill Cosby! Howdy,Woody Allen!) We live in a 24/7 news culture in which there’s no time for rest and reflection. When a story like this breaks, it’s chewed over and broken down into multiple bits of content. Rather than seeing just one story in the daily newspaper, we see this same story in:

Front-page news articles

Twitter reports

Blogs

In-depth followup analysis on the local news

Overviews on the national news

Plus, readers of particularly nasty bits of news sometimes feel compelled to add in their two cents. Sometimes, they simply write their own blog entries, or they add their comments to existing stories about the issue. But sometimes, they take the idea of justice to the next level, and they mount their own attacks due to the stories they’ve read. This kind of vigilante justice is particularly common in cases of bullying, as an article in theNew York Timesmakes clear, but there’s a bit of it in play in cases of political malfeasance as well. I can’t imagine that Kitzhaber could put up any kind of statement without getting a lot of backlash right now. In Oregon, he really is assumed guilty.

Can that kind of mob mentality turn into great, big mistakes? You betcha. But unfortunately, we won’t know what those mistakes are until months from now. The Kitzhaber investigation is still ongoing, even with his resignation, and the prosecutor’s officejust asked for paperworkfor that investigation. It could be weeks or even months until we know what really happened.

If Kitzhaber isn’t wrong, he should take a victory lap. But who will be there to celebrate with him? Who will be following the story by then? Won’t we all be consumed with other problems in a few months?

The Kitzhaber debacle remindsus that there’s no room for error in our celebrity culture. All of us simply must be careful and cautious with our reputations, so we don’t run into problems like this. Being innocent simply isn’t enough any more. We need to be so sparkly clean that we’re beyond suspicion.

Is it more important to have a big bank account or an excellent online reputation? That’s a question up for debate all around the world today, and a clear answer is emerging. According to most people, your value in your community has little to nothing to do with how much you make or how you spend your money. Instead, your value is tied to something much deeper and much more profound.

A speaker from a2012 TED talkcalled this value “trustworthiness.” In essence, she suggests that everyone in the community can be judged by how well that person has performed in the past, based on the opinions and reviews of others.

And if it’s true that your online reputation is more valuable than your credit score, now’s the time for everyone to make some big changes.

Understanding the Shift

In the past, you could hide behind your credit score when you were asked to do all sorts of things, including:

Buying a car

Buying a house

Getting an apartment

Landing a job

Simply flashing a big number could help you to demonstrate that you’ve kept your promises, and that some big business out there trusted you.

But, there are all sorts of new companies that just don’t follow this old model. For example,sites like Lenddoare designed to factor in social media signals when determining whether or not to loan a person money. If you have any kind of negative ding on your social sites, out go your chances of a loan.

Same goes for traditional recruiting. In the past, employers would simply call up your references and your previous employers to determine what kind of a worker you might be. But now, more than 30 percent of employers admit that they look up their prospects on Facebook before scheduling an interview, saysTNW. That means social signals are just part of the hiring process.

And, people hoping to rent you an apartment might also be driven to hit the web before they hand over the paperwork for you to sign. The data is just out there and it’s compelling. Your credit score isn’t nearly as easy to get nor as easy to parse. Social media sites are free, and the data is right there. Why wouldn’t people use it?

New Businesses

If you’re hoping to make money in less traditional ways and open up your own micro business, your reputation is even more important.

Take eBay as an example. According to thewebsite, sellers must have a score of 4.6 or higher in order to get the PowerSeller discount (which can add up to a lot of dough). And if your scores are low, no one will even buy from you in the first place. Your reputation and ratings are simply vital to your success.

Other sites will take the penalties yet further. Recently, for example, Airbnb removed a number of listings from the site, according toSkift, because the listings came with low scores. The site didn’t want to be responsible for selling a sub-par product, so the site pulled the listings. Clearly, success on this site has to do only with reputation.

We Can Help

So what does that mean for you? For starters, it means you simply must be paying attention to your reputation management techniques. Treating others (including your customers, if applicable) with care can help. But spotting and squelching emerging reputation problems could be even more important.

And we can make that monitoring really easy. Our monitoring plans allow you to see attacks as they happen, so you can come up with the right response and stem the damage before it gets out of hand. And if you find a problem, we can help you to fix it, too. Clickhereto read more about the programs we offer for individuals, and read more about our business solutionshere.

]]>http://www.internetreputation.com/how-important-is-your-online-reputation/feed/0How Your Reputation is Getting Destroyed without Your Knowledgehttp://www.internetreputation.com/how-your-reputation-is-getting-destroyed-with-your-knowledge/
http://www.internetreputation.com/how-your-reputation-is-getting-destroyed-with-your-knowledge/#commentsThu, 05 Feb 2015 18:37:42 +0000http://www.internetreputation.com/?p=5430The first impression individuals, customers and clients see around your brand is going to leave a lasting impression. Whether that first impression is a positive or a negative will greatly influence whether you bring in new business, or simply send them off to your competition instead.

Now let’s take a look at some of the different ways someone could be damaging your reputation and first impression through each of these platforms.

Angry Customer Reviews

No matter what business or service you are in, you just can’t please everyone. Even if you offer the best service to every customer and make sure their meal or product is perfect… someone is going to have a bad day and take it out on your business.

This happens all the time on sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor and many other business review sites. So, what can you do about it? In most cases, not much… but what you can do is learn from these negative reviews and see how you can improve your business to address these issues so they won’t happen again for someone to complain about.

False Accusations and Defamatory Statements

The only thing worse than a customer complaint, is a false statement, especially when they are made from your competition! This happens all the time, mainly because sites like Yelp allow anyone to post anonymously to their sites.

If it comes to the point where you see consistent complaints and negative statements that you feel are false and from your competition, then it’s time to contact legal counsel. However, in most cases you won’t be able to go after the site directly where the content is being posted to.

Social Media is an Endless Battlefield

With over 1.3 billion users on Facebook and another few hundred million on sites like Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram… everyone has an opinion.

This means all businesses and brands need to not only have a presence on ALL social networks, but also the ability to monitor and respond to all complaints, reviews and updates being made — whether they are positive or negative.

Yelp: Local Reviews Directory

Yelp is the largest site on the internet for local restaurant reviews. If you were ever thinking about going to a new restaurant in your area or while on travel, you probably ended up on their site for a quick search of customer reviews, pictures of their food and also to get an idea on prices.

For restaurant owners this might seem like all is well, till they release Yelp allows ANYONE to leave reviews on their site, and they don’t even need to confirm their identity or prove that their experience really happened.

This opens up a whole world of disaster for businesses listed on Yelp, as negative reviews, customer complaints and defamatory statements flood the site.

Tips for How to Address Negative Reviews

We’ve listed some of the most common ways a brand can have their reputation ruined online and not necessarily be aware of it.

When possible, try to contact the person with the complaint directly to address the issue. Make sure to never try and resolve an issue in a public forum or area that is open for comments and discussion. The reason behind this is that you never know when a situation might scale out of control and no longer be repairable.

Whether you want to believe it or not, your online reputation is at risk 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. If you aren’t monitoring your brand mentions, you just might never know how bad your brand looks online to everyone else. To learn more protect your brand and good reputation, feel free to contact InternetReputation.com at (888) 711-5576 or click here to setup a free consultation.

]]>http://www.internetreputation.com/how-your-reputation-is-getting-destroyed-with-your-knowledge/feed/05 Reputation Management Tips for Brand Marketershttp://www.internetreputation.com/5-reputation-management-tips-for-brand-marketers/
http://www.internetreputation.com/5-reputation-management-tips-for-brand-marketers/#commentsTue, 03 Feb 2015 22:12:52 +0000http://www.internetreputation.com/?p=5424In the world of the internet, your reputation is up for grabs every day. Even if you play by the rules, keep your customers happy and have a great product or service — there is no telling what the next day might hold!

For instance, on any given day you could be dealing with any of the following:

A defective product or service leads to controversy, personal damage and possibly negative media coverage

Your competition decides they want to take out their problems against you and writes false statements about your brand online

What a nightmare! You did all the right things and now your reputation is put at risk!

As you can imagine, managing your online reputation is a lot more than just making sure everything is good and clean on your end. It’s about OWNING your brand and what people see in the search results when they look for your name. It’s also about knowing where to look, how to find it fast and how to address the situation.

Below we’ve listed five excellent methods that every brand marketer can use to better improve their chances for maintaining their good reputation online, while also keeping your clients and customers happy in the process.

5 Reputation Management Tips for Brand Marketers

By implementing each of these practices into your existing business and branding efforts, you will have better control over how your name and brand looks when someone searches for it online.

1 – Your Must Own Your Search Results

This is probably the most important and obvious way to defend your name against fraudulent activity, defamation and complaints from anonymous customers and your competition.

Whenever someone looks for something online, they always start with a search engine — whether it be Google, Bing or Yahoo, you need to make sure your site ranks at the top of the search results… if not the whole first page.

2 – Kick Your Social Game into Gear

The internet is quickly changing and it’s not just about what people are reading on your sites or how they are engaging with your mailing list. Now it’s more about what other people are saying and where they say it.

With over a billion users on social networks, you need to not only monitor what people are saying about your brand — you also need to make sure your brand is prevalent!

3 – Blogging is the New SEO

While SEO is the core of many reputation management practices, having a blog helps protect and grow your brand in more ways than ever. Blogs are alive and Google loves the fresh new content that flourishes from them on a daily basis. Blogs are also engaging and allow people to leave comments and share content with their social following.

Implement a blog into your brand and business and not only will you rank higher in the search results for your brand, you will also rank for any relevant content you write about as well.

4 – Get Creative with Your Online Marketing

Your competition is writing blog posts on a daily basis and are always sending out engaging social updates to their followers. Congrats for them, now what else can you do with your brand to be even more exciting and engaging?

Get creative! Study what your competition is doing, and do it better. This could be anything from posting interviews on your blog with industry experts, creating how to videos to post to YouTube or even creating infographics for your audience to share.

Go outside your comfort zone and invest in your brand by creating quality content that people want to read, see and share with others.

5 – Monitor, Monitor, Monitor

No matter how many times we say it, monitoring your brand mentions is extremely important. We’ve talked about SEO, ranking higher, social media and even content generation — but what good is it all if you aren’t tracking who is saying what, and where it’s being said.

You must monitor all search, social and news mentions around your brand. Fortunately we’ve created the perfect tool for you to monitor your personal name and brand mentions at no cost!

The Importance of Reputation Management for Brand Marketers

No matter what your current job is or what industry you are working in, it’s extremely important to have a clean first impression online.

Every day someone new is searching for your brand or business, and they may even be finding it by mistake. No matter how they find it, you need to make sure that it’s a good first impression.

By implementing our five recommended practices above, you will improve your chances for a better first impression online. If you can’t manage these tasks on your own, we’re always just a phone call away.

To learn more about how to keep your online reputation clean and always have a great first impression, feel free to contact InternetReputation.com at (888) 711-5576 or click here to setup a free consultation.

]]>http://www.internetreputation.com/5-reputation-management-tips-for-brand-marketers/feed/03 Ways to Improve How Your Local Business Looks Onlinehttp://www.internetreputation.com/3-ways-to-improve-how-your-local-business-looks-online/
http://www.internetreputation.com/3-ways-to-improve-how-your-local-business-looks-online/#commentsThu, 29 Jan 2015 22:20:03 +0000http://www.internetreputation.com/?p=5422For local businesses, new customers and business means everything.

With the internet quickly changing how offline businesses need to adapt and change their business, it’s now more important than ever for every brand and business to make sure they have a positive first impression online.

First we need to identify when and where people are searching for your brand online. We’ve listed some of the many reasons below.

To find the location of your store or restaurant

Look over your menu, prices and pictures of your food/services

Review what other customers and clients are saying about your brand

There are many reasons why someone is going to search for your local business online, but the three listed above are the most important. If someone is searching for your brand or business online using any of those focuses above, they are already in buying/action mode and should they see anything negative that turns them away, you are simply going to lose a customer in mere seconds.

For this reason and many more… you must keep your online reputation and first impression clean — which is exactly what we are going to be covering in this article.

How to Improve How Your Local Business Looks Online

As a local business, you can try and focus your efforts on customers in your area and being a well known and trusted brand within your niche — but at the end of the day, online marketing, search and content around your brand is going to determine your brands future.

1.) Build Your Brand on Social Media Before Someone Else Does

Your local business is probably well known in your area, but when you are competing against millions of other sites and brands… it’s a free for all.

This means you are going to need to secure your name and brand across all of the major social networks. Not only to keep your name and reputation safe, but also to connect with your audience and grow your online following over time.

2.) Create a Web Site & Blog for Your Brand / Local Business

Gone are the days when customers have flyers and menus on their refrigerators. Now everyone simply Googles a brand or businesses name, finds their phone number or menu online and then places an order.

If your local business isn’t online, who are they going to find? Most likely your competition.

Creating a web site and blog are two of the most effective ways to solidify your place in the world of online marketing and search.

Setup a domain name (preferably matching the name of your business), throw together some valuable content and also make it easy for customers to find information and navigate through your site.

You can greatly improve your chances for ranking higher in the search results by adding a blog to your site and creating more relevant content for your audience. (ie: If you own a local pizza spot, why not create a blog and write articles on where you get your ingredients from and why your pizza is the best? This isn’t a question — it’s a must!)

3.) Engage with Your Audience and Grow Your Following

No matter what you do online, whether it be create a social media account, run a blog from your site or even keep your Google Local listings up to the highest standards… you are still going to have to deal with reviews, comments and questions from your customers and also engaging with your audience.

The worst thing you can do is create a site and let it grow old with stale content. The same holds true for how you monitor and manage any negative or positive reviews people might leave for your brand.

The longer this activity isn’t attended to, the longer it will stick around to potentially damage your brand and business in the long run.

In short, engage with your audience and treat how people remark about your business and brand like it was your personal name.

How Your Local Business Looks Online is Up to You!

At the end of the day, your local business is now an online business. Even though you are catering to a local audience, your brand is now a world wide listing once it’s placed on the internet.

This means you need to know when, where and why your brand or business is being mentioned online. The best way to track and manage this is through the use of our free monitoring software.

You won’t need to search manually through Google to find mentions for your name, we can do it for you, and email reports will be sent over to you every time something new comes up.

This is just one of the many online reputation management solutions we offers for individuals, businesses and brands of all sizes.

To learn more about what ranks for your name in the search results and how to protect your online reputation, feel free to contact InternetReputation.com at (888) 711-5576 or click here to setup a free consultation.

]]>http://www.internetreputation.com/3-ways-to-improve-how-your-local-business-looks-online/feed/0Internet Reputation 2015: How to Keep Your Brand Safehttp://www.internetreputation.com/internet-reputation-2015/
http://www.internetreputation.com/internet-reputation-2015/#commentsWed, 28 Jan 2015 00:50:42 +0000http://www.internetreputation.com/?p=5409Internet reputation has never been as important as it is today. With 2015 now in full effect, it’s now more important than ever for you to know what to look out for when monitoring your personal and brand name mentions online.

We’ve taken the guess work out of how to keep your online reputation and brand awareness safe by pointing out our best posts for the new year.

If you are still on the fence about reputation management, there is no better time to implement it into your brand or business right now. With each passing moment, how and where your brand is being talked about quickly expanding.

Social media is one of the biggest factors in keeping your personal name and/or brand safe. While many brands will be concerned about what others are saying about their brand and products through social media, it’s important to remember that social media is also your friend.

LinkedIn for example is one of the most power social media networks out there, especially when you are focusing on your personal resume or business. LinkedIn not only has 300+ million other business professionals that can find your information and vouch for you and your service, but you will also receive a high ranking listing in Google for your personal and business LinkedIn page as well!

As long as you and your brand are around, you are going to need to continually monitor your online reputation and know what others are saying online.

For the average individual or business, this can be quite an overwhelming task, however InternetReputation.com has helped thousands better understand how to monitor and repair their online reputations… and it all starts with small daily activities like the ones we’ve laid out below.

Write a Weekly Blog Post

Set Up Continuous Monitoring

Try Just One New Social Media Site

Start One Reputable Project

Get Help For Deep-Set Problems

Simple tasks like setting up a WordPress blog and writing a weekly post to your site can play a huge influence in when and where your site and brand ranks in the search results. Throw in the addition of brand monitoring, social media activity and the creation of high authority sites are you are on the right path.

For those deeper set problems that just seem impossible to deal with or you simply have no idea where to start — well, that’s exactly where we come in!

We’re available 24 hours per day, 7 days a week and always more than willing to listen to your situation and plan out how to best address the situation.

Keeping Your Online Reputation Safe in 2015

As you can see, with each passing year there are plenty of new methods, web sites and social networks for individuals and brands to worry about.

The good news is that you don’t have to go alone on what might seem like a never ending journey. Instead of visiting web sites and search engines manually to see what others are saying about your brand, you can use our advanced line of automation software to put your online reputation monitoring on autopilot.

To learn more about what ranks for your name in the search results and how to protect your online reputation, feel free to contact InternetReputation.com at (888) 711-5576 or click here to setup a free consultation.